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The last available census estimated around 10 per cent of total urban working women in India are concentrated in the low paid domestic services such as cleaning, cooking, and taking care of the children and the elderly. This is found to be much higher in certain parts of India, emerging as the single most important avenue for urban females, surpassing males in the service since the 1980s. By applying an imaginative and refreshing mix of disciplinary approaches ranging from economic models of the household, empirical analysis and literary conventions, this book analyses the changing labour economy in post-partition West Bengal. It explains how and why women and girl children have replaced this traditionally male bias in the gender segregated domestic service industry since the late 1940s, and addresses the question of whether this increase in vulnerable individuals working in domestic service, the growth of the urban professional middle class in the post liberalization period, and the increasing incidences of reported abuses of domestics, in urban middleclass homes in the recent years, are related. Covering five decades of the history of gender and labour in India, this book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of gender and labour relations, development studies, economics, history, and women and gender studies.

During the last two decades, India has experienced a high growth rate, but the contribution from productivity growth and technological progress has been very low. This has resulted in a poor performance in the employment generation in the formal sector, and this book examines this phenomenon and the Indian growth pattern. Using primary and secondary data, the book looks at the impact of economic reform on technological change and total productivity growth, and in turn its impact on the labour market. It examines the effect of trade reform on the form and functioning of labour markets, and goes on to look at the impact of the global financial crisis on the Indian labour market. Offering interesting modelling exercises and empirical verifications that bring fresh ideas and new content, this book is of interest to academics in the fields of development economics, international economics and South Asian studies.

India started on a program of reforms, both in its external and internal aspects, sometime in the mid-eighties and going on into the nineties. While the increased exposure to world markets (‘globalization’) and relaxation of domestic controls has undoubtedly given a spurt to the GDP growth rate, its impact on poverty, inequality and employment have been controversial. This book examines in detail these aspects of post-reform India and discerns the changes and trends which these new developments have created. Providing an original analysis of unit-level data available from the quinquennial National Sample Surveys, the Annual Surveys of Industries and other basic data sources, the authors analyze and compare the results with other pieces of work in the literature. As well as describing the overall situation for India, the book highlights regional differences, and looks at the major industrial sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and tertiary/services. The important topic of labor market institutions – both for the formal or organized and the unorganized sectors – is considered and the possible adverse effect on employment growth of the regulatory labor framework is examined carefully. Since any reform of this framework must go hand in hand with better state intervention in the informal sector to have any chance of acceptance politically, some of the major initiatives in this area are critically explored. The book is based on the results of a collaborative research project carried out at the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi, which is an autonomous institution specializing in labor markets, employment and human development issues. The Munk Centre for International Studies (MCIS) of the University of Toronto provided administrative support for the project funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottowa. Overall, this book will be of great interest to development economists, labor economists and specialists in South Asian Studies.

This book presents the results of a series of studies of the labor markets in Pune, a medium-sized city in India. In the seven-year period over which these studies were carried out, Pune was transformed from a quiet administrative and educational center with a few isolated, relatively low technology factories, employing mostly unskilled and semi-skilled laborers, into a major manufacturing city with a substantial number of large-scale factories producing a diverse set of products, requiring high technology and a skilled work force. At the same time there was what is referred to as the Pune urban agglomoration growth. If there ever was a mix of rapid industrialization, and rapid urbanization, this was it.

During the last two decades, India has experienced a high growth rate, but the contribution from productivity growth and technological progress has been very low. This has resulted in a poor performance in the employment generation in the formal sector, and this book examines this phenomenon and the Indian growth pattern.Using primary and secondary data, the book looks at the impact of economic reform on technological change and total productivity growth, and in turn its impact on the labour market. It examines the effect of trade reform on the form and functioning of labour markets, and goes

India started on a program of reforms, both in its external and internal aspects, in the mid-1980s. While the increased exposure to world markets (globalization) and relaxation of domestic controls has undoubtedly given a spurt to the GDP growth rate, the impact of reforms on poverty, inequality and employment have been controversial. This book examines in detail these aspects of postreform India and discerns the changes and trends that these new developments have created. Providing an original analysis of unit-level data available from the quinquennial National Sample Surveys, the Annual Surv

This paper develops a new approach to test for downward wage rigidity by examining transitory shocks to labor demand (i.e., rainfall) across 600 Indian districts. Nominal wages rise during positive shocks but do not fall during droughts. In addition, transitory positive shocks generate ratcheting: after they have dissipated, wages do not adjust back down. Ratcheting reduces employment by 9 percent, indicating that rigidities distort employment levels. Inflation, which is unaffected by local rainfall, enables downward real wage adjustments—offering causal evidence for its labor market effects. Surveys suggest that individuals believe nominal wage cuts are unfair and lead to effort reductions.

Labour market intermediaries (LMIs) are gaining prominence in forging employment relations with principal employer and labour in a tripartite setting. In this article, we underpin the current literature situating LMIs in the global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs) to its historical provenance that of the Indian labour contractor ( thekedaar) by studying the role of the labour contractor in three globally pegged Indian colonial sites: the Indian Railways, the Bombay cotton mills, and the tea plantations. This historical analysis helps us understand the morphing nature of LMIs in India, post-2000, in the form of human resource companies (HRCs). For the latter, we use a novel dataset—companies registered under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, to extract those established to serve the purpose of LMIs. This data are juxtaposed with the theoretical framework that classifies LMIs into a typology of matchmakers, information providers and administrators. Given the long history and phenomenal diversity in practices of LMIs in India, we conclude that it is difficult to capture them within the existing classificatory frameworks and thus offers opportunities for theory extension. We conclude that though the thekedaars are evolving into a more sophisticated and formalised versions of human resource companies or Staffing Solution Companies, there has not been much change in their core functions as labour market intermediaries.

In contrast with global trends, India has witnessed a secular decline in women’s employment rates over the past few decades. We investigate this decline in rural areas, where the majority of Indian women reside. Using parametric and semiparametric decomposition techniques, we show that changes in individual and household attributes fully account for the fall in women’s labor force participation in 1987–1999 and account for more than half of the decline in 1999–2011. Our findings underscore increasing education levels among rural married women and the men in their households as the most prominent attributes contributing to this decline. We provide suggestive evidence that changes in more educated women’s relative returns to home production compared with market production may have adversely affected female labor force participation in rural India.

This paper measures excess labor supply in equilibrium. We induce hiring shocks—which employ 24 percent of the labor force in external month-long jobs—in Indian local labor markets. In peak months, wages increase instantaneously and local aggregate employment declines. In lean months, consistent with severe labor rationing, wages and aggregate employment are unchanged, with positive employment spillovers on remaining workers, indicating that over a quarter of labor supply is rationed. At least 24 percent of lean self-employment among casual workers occurs because they cannot find jobs. Consequently, traditional survey approaches mismeasure labor market slack. Rationing has broad implications for labor market analysis.